I've heard conflicting information
Shocker!
OK you've got super healthy plants, and anyone who can do that in a pot, has my respect. With a healthy vigorous plant like that there is nothing that you can cut of that will stress the plant. I will always to a defoliation once it's at about your stage, not just to let some light in, but I get to see the structure of the plant and make some early decisions about what branches should be removed. Try and visualise the plant how you'd like her to be, look at what are definitely going to be the main branches, and see how many smaller branches are coming off each one. For example a branch that I might leave on a branch that doesn't have too much to do, but I might cut the same branch off if it was on a main branch that was supporting other strong growth. You more have to worry about stressing yourself than the plant.
Just taking the obvious stuff off is good, you can't go wrong with that. This is where experience of your own grow set up and abilities come in, it's annoying to leave a branch on that you later decide to cut off, but only mildly. Sometimes you just can't be sure. Take lots of photos for your later reference.
Cutting anything off a healthy cannabis plant will never "stress" it. Like imagine this say you have a healthy auto growing and you cut every single branch except for the main central branch, off. What's left will grow normally, why wouldn't it.
Some photos below of my first Auto a few years ago, I didn't have a clue what I was doing as I had only ever worked with cloned photoperiod plants, plus I had a break of 22 years. I trusted that defoliation wouldn't hurt her, how did work out to do that with so much 'conflicting' information? I just paid attention to people who had done it and showed me what is possible, That's all I need, once I've seen something with my own eyes, I tend to believe that. She looked very gangly and straggly to me and there weren't any really obvious main branches. You can see how severe I went, then I put a scrog on her, then I did some ridiculous supercropping (which I don't really do any more) you can see one branch bent right over. I have to admit I thought I buggered this entirely.
When I started I was confident that I could grow an eight ounce plant, by the time she had the scrog on, I was thinking that three ounces would be the best I could hope for. Ended up producing 9 ounces of very nice OG. I hope this gives you the confidence.
